The average smartphone owner uses nine different apps per day and 30 per month. But most of us are guilty of having countless apps that we don’t even open anymore. All of these apps use a significant amount of storage space. Many operate continuously in the background eating up your battery and slowing down your phone significantly.
The best way to improve the performance of your smartphone is to declutter and organize. It’s always a good time to do a little spring cleaning on your phone. Before you do, make sure you backup and update. You don’t want to accidentally delete any pictures, movies, or other data that you still need.
With that said, let’s check out some of these top strategies designed to boost speed, storage space, and battery life.
1) Delete Any Apps You Don’t Use
Once again, most people use the same nine apps every day. So what are you still doing with the Shanghai Metro app you downloaded while visiting China two years ago? This will not only free up storage space but also reduce the time you spend sifting through your apps while trying to find the one you actually need. Pay particular attention to apps that track your location in the background. These use the most memory and battery.
2) Organize Apps Into Categories
People organize their clothes, food, music, and even their friends but many never organize their apps. It’s very convenient to put everything in folders so that when you’re looking for a particular app, you can easily find it. Create a “Social” folder for apps like Facebook and Instagram, “Finance” for PayPal and Venmo, and “Entertainment” for YouTube and Netflix. You can also organize these folders alphabetically to make your phone even easier to use.
3) Delete Excess Media
During the era of the iPod, it was great to hold thousands of songs, movies, and images on a single device. But everything has moved to the cloud. Think about how often your phone is not actually connected to the internet. For most people, this only happens when they are on an airplane.
A good place to start is with your pictures. Even though your smartphone can do a burst capture with 100 photos per second, you don’t need them all. Spend thirty minutes and go through all your pictures to delete blurry, out of focus images you don’t want to keep. Likewise, go through your music library and delete anything you haven’t listened to in two months or more. Finally, trash any videos downloaded from Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming apps that you’ve already watched.
4) Download a VPN
People have antivirus software, firewalls, and many other tools for their desktop computers to block spam, malware, and viruses. However, when it comes to their phone, most users don’t take any security measures. Remember, smartphones are pocket computers. One of the best ways to prevent malware buildup, which can choke your speed and steal your personal data, is to use a virtual private network. As soon as you turn it on, your phone’s internet connection is encrypted, thus creating a strong shield against online threats.
5) Choose What Notifications You Want
Every app maker believes their notifications are important. That’s why they are toggled on by default. Go through your settings and choose which notifications you actually want on and shut off any that annoy you. You can even customize which notifications you want to see in some apps. For example, you can set Facebook to only notify you about messages but not other things such as a friend’s updated profile status.
6) Track How You Use Your Phone
You might be surprised by how much you use your phone. A few minutes here and there really do add up over the course of a day. Check out apps like Moment and BreakFree. They not only track the total time you spend on your phone but also create detailed reports and statistics so you can see exactly which apps you spend the most time on and other trends. Seeing all these stats may be just the jolt you need to clear out anything that might be wasting too much of your time.
Smartphones are powerful tools. They are vital for business, learning, entertainment, and much more. So whether you are glued to phone 8 hours per day or hardly ever pick it up, you can benefit from a little organization. Delete any apps you no longer use. Also, remove old media like bad photos and music you no longer listen to. Download a VPN on Play Store to protect against malware and cyber threats. Finally, keep an eye out on your statistics to see what apps may be wasting too much of your time. By doing this, you’ll increase your battery life and storage space, thus maximizing the performance of your smartphone.
